Man involved in fatal Cape crash was tied to Fall River murder

Monday

Jul 30, 2018 at 3:26 PMJul 31, 2018 at 5:07 PM

Mickey Rivera, 22, was released from custody on Sept 19, 2017, after Superior Court Judge Thomas McGuire lowered his bail from $35,000 cash to $1,000.

FALL RIVER — The Fall River man involved in a weekend head-on collision on Cape Cod that killed himself and another man had a pending criminal case where he had been charged as an accessory in a 2015 murder in Fall River.

Mickey Rivera, 22, was released from custody on Sept 19, 2017, after Superior Court Judge Thomas McGuire lowered his bail from $35,000 cash to $1,000. In a prepared statement released Monday, Bristol County District Attorney Tom Quinn criticized the judge’s decision.

“I was very disappointed the court reduced the defendant’s bail so drastically, based on the defendant’s criminal record and the serious nature of the charges,” Quinn said.

Rivera — who according to documents in Fall River District Court had a lengthy juvenile and adult criminal record — was on GPS monitoring and had his Superior Court case pending when he reportedly crashed head-on into a sport utility vehicle just after midnight Saturday in Cotuit, just over the Mashpee line.

Kevin P. Quinn, 32, of Mashpee, a 32-year-old Marine veteran who the Cape Cod Times reported served two combat tours in Afghanistan and was a new father, was driving the SUV. Quinn was extricated from the vehicle with severe injuries, and was later pronounced dead at South Shore Hospital.

Police said Rivera was ejected from his sedan and pronounced dead at the scene. Jocelyn Goyette, 24, of New Bedford, a passenger in Rivera’s vehicle, was also ejected from the vehicle. She was transported to a hospital in Boston, where police said she remained in critical condition, according to published reports.

Until his release on bail last September, Rivera had spent more than two years in custody after being arrested in connection to the March 20, 2015 murder of Anthony Carvalho in Fall River. The district attorney’s office said Rivera, accompanied by Tavon Pires, then 17, Kevin Lara, then 19, and a juvenile, had gone out that evening with the intention to rob someone.

However, prosecutors said the robbery turned into the fatal shooting of Carvalho, 20, at the intersection of Osborne and Ridge streets, behind St. Anne’s Hospital. Lara and Pires are accused of shooting Carvalho, and both are still awaiting trial on murder charges.

Early on in that investigation, police charged Rivera with witness intimidation and being an accessory to murder. At the time of his arrest, court documents indicate that Rivera was on probation for a pending criminal matter. In March 2015, Rivera was charged with armed and masked home invasion, armed assault and assault and battery with a dangerous weapon in connection to the stabbing of two women in Taunton that involved several other defendants.

In December 2015, the case against Rivera in Taunton District Court was dismissed because the victims could not identify Rivera. The district attorney’s office said the only other independent witness was granted a fifth amendment privilege, leaving prosecutors with no good-faith basis to move forward with the case against Rivera.

Police and fire crews clean up at the scene of a double fatal accident on Rt. 28 just west of the Rt. 130 intersection in Cotuit. The accident took place around midnight when a black GMC SUV collided head on with a Toyota sedan.@capecodtimespic.twitter.com/d1JsOboGkS

— Steve Heaslip (@cctphoto)July 28, 2018

In June 2015, a Bristol County grand jury indicted Rivera on charges that included armed assault with intent to rob, attempted armed and masked robbery, conspiracy and witness intimidation (misleading police) in connection to the Carvalho murder. Rivera pleaded not guilty to those charges at his July 2015 arraignment in Superior Court at Fall River. Judge Raymond Veary set a $35,000 cash bail. In January 2016, the court ordered additional conditions that Rivera have no contact with witnesses and his co-defendants.

On Sept. 19, 2017, Rivera’s attorney filed a new motion to reduce the bail to an amount that the defendant could afford. The motion was filed less than a month after the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court's ruling in Commonwealth v. Brangan that directed lower court judges to set cash bails that defendants could afford.

Over prosecutors’ objections, Judge McGuire reduced Rivera’s bail to $1,000 cash, which Rivera posted. In its prepared statement, the district attorney’s office said the SJC decision allowed judges to set high cash bails as long as the judges could provide their reasoning.

Rivera originally had a motion hearing scheduled for Tuesday in Superior Court at Fall River. The docket indicates the hearing has been rescheduled to Sept. 4. The case will be dismissed sometime after that.

Email Brian Fraga at bfraga@heraldnews.com

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